


Some Watery Tart

by LookingForOctober



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:58:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1113039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LookingForOctober/pseuds/LookingForOctober
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chao-Ahn wants to learn from the Slayer herself, but Buffy has other priorities.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Watery Tart

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally published on the livejournal community sb_fag_ends, in response to the prompt "A Lady in the Lake".
> 
> This story takes place in a mashup of Seasons 6 & 7, so Buffy has just come back from the dead and the potentials have just come to Sunnydale.

After she fled her country to save her life, she lived silence. Words were gone, the babble of sound without meaning surrounded her, and soon futility settled on her tongue, restraining even the impulse to speak.

She never told anyone that she was scared.

Never shared secrets in the dark.

She lived with them, trained with them, cried with them. Pointed her points, argued in mime. Hugged. Held. We are sisters, she thought, but it went no further than her own head. 

 

Long shadows crossed the yard, obscuring some of the scattered junk. The coiled hose, the garden tools in a pile, the trellis and the wading pool, and the dummy vampire at the far end, all abandoned and purposeless. A stray ray of sunlight gleamed on the blade of a shovel. 

This homemade obstacle course had defeated her. Time after time she'd tripped and fallen, usually into the water. She'd been helped up and hectored in words she didn't understand, and it turned out that she didn't need words to have a shouting match. Nor, in the end, to say you were sorry if you really meant it. But none of that had gotten her to the end of the course in time.

Now, in solitude, she slipped off her jacket and stood at the start, measuring out the spaces between obstacles. Light and shadow, solid ground and obstacles and a target at the end. She took a breath and moved.

Seven seconds later, splash. She'd expected it, but she wasn't expecting the hand that reached out of the shadows to help her up. The Slayer. 

_The_ Slayer: she wore solitude like a pair of pajamas she'd forgotten to change to start her day. Comfortable in it but never relaxed, and no matter how she smiled, there was something off. Something held her apart, that was easy to recognize by someone who shared the same sort of distance. The same silence engulfed them both.

She took the Slayer's hand and let her help her up. The Slayer led her back to the start, then pulled out a stake from her jacket sleeve and fell into an easy balanced stance. When the Slayer moved, her balance never faltered. Across the rough ground, around the trellis and a graceful leap over the pool, and that stake hit the dummy exactly in the center of the target.

The Slayer pulled out the stake and tossed it to her.

Instinctively, almost as easily as a Slayer should, she grabbed it out of the air. It felt right in her hand. Just heavy enough, a weapon that could penetrate to the heart. She looked at the Slayer and the Slayer nodded toward the start.

She was going to do this. She had the Slayer's own stake and the Slayer was watching. She balanced herself and focused, and step by incredible step she ran and leaped and thrust home. Just like a Slayer. Like a real Potential. She could feel the beam of her smile in the sudden stretch of her cheeks--

But when she looked up the Slayer wasn't watching. The pale-haired vampire had joined her, and they were studiously not looking at each other. They did that. She'd seen it before.

She eyed the vampire suspiciously as she joined them. He returned the look with a raised eyebrow and nudged the Slayer, who glared at the vampire.

Her smile was slipping away, but she tried to hold on to it as she held the stake out to the Slayer, still hoping for a moment of wordless communication. But all she got was a quick head shake, a forced smile and a gesture for her to keep it; the vampire got the eye contact and a massive frown.

Disappointed, she turned away. Behind her, an argument broke out. In that sound she had no place, so she silently left them to it.

 

Going back out for her jacket, she heard a thump and a splash, and when she looked that way her hand involuntarily rose to her mouth. Two bodies, wet clothing clinging, in the sheltered shadows by the trellis and the wading pool.

In silence, she saw everything.

And as she turned to go back inside, she knew two things. She would keep their secret. And she would keep the stake.


End file.
